Ken Kiff was a brilliant odd one out in post-second world war British painting. In works that sing with colour and texture, he crafted wibbly-wobbly fables in which eyes and noses slide around faces, animals tower over mountains and dreaming, desiring, questing men are rendered poignantly goofy. Looking to modernist greats such as Klee and … Read more
It seems budding writers can make alternative plans for this coming November. Maybe take a holiday, learn to juggle, work on their chess openings … or anything, anything, that doesn’t involve writing an entire novel in a month. I am, of course, referring to the sad news that the online writing community NaNoWriMo is calling … Read more
Radhika Jones, the editor of Vanity Fair since 2017, said on Thursday she would step down after seven years of leading the magazine. Ms. Jones, 52, said in an email to Vanity Fair’s staff that she was leaving to take on new challenges, adding that she didn’t want to experience the “horror of staying too … Read more
You haven’t lived, it turns out, until you’ve seen a blazing-hot pole dance accompanied by a mournful Irish fiddle. Or perhaps a B-boy headspinning to the song of a button accordion. In fact there are a lot of things you didn’t know you needed in this show, Wake, by the Dublin-based theatre company Thisispopbaby, which … Read more
The year is 2009, and Glee has hit like a cultural earthquake. Every week, millions of people around the world tune in to watch a group of American high school misfits belt out musical theatre and pop hits, turning show choir into mainstream entertainment. The cast’s cover of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ becomes an anthem, … Read more
The last time Black Country, New Road released a studio album, in 2022, it was accompanied by a strange feeling. Their debut the previous year had reached No 4 in the UK charts, and Ants from Up There was an even greater breakthrough, the sound of the UK septet pulling confidently away from the serried … Read more
By any estimation, Minecraft is impossibly successful. The bestselling video game ever, as of last December it had 204 million monthly active players. Since it was first released in 2011, it has generated over $3bn (£2.3bn) in revenue. What’s more, its players have always been eager to demonstrate their fandom outside the boundaries of the … Read more
Troop into Eg White’s living room, past the bright, spacious kitchen and the yapping terriers (“Meet the unwelcoming committee!”), then descend into the snug basement studio with its underfloor heating and you will have reached the place where pop bangers are born: hits for Adele (Chasing Pavements), Will Young (Leave Right Now), Duffy (Warwick Avenue) … Read more
Jeff Goldblum is an actor. He has starred in films both cult (Earth Girls Are Easy) and blockbuster (Jurassic Park). He’s worked with Wes Anderson. He’s been part of the MCU. Last year he was in Wicked, a film that made three quarters of a billion dollars and won multiple Oscars. Make no mistake, Jeff … Read more
The start of postwar theatre in London was signalled by the birth of the Old Vic school in the rubble of the bombed theatre in Waterloo in 1948 and the reopening of the Old Vic itself in 1950. The actor Lee Montague, who has died aged 97, was a founding student at the school and … Read more